“Page 134 Florence Nightengale is speaking to William MonkOf course. If you know the truth, it takes a gentler and perhaps a wiser woman than Purdence Barrymore not to speak it aloud. She did not understand the arts of diplomacy. I fear that perhaps I do not either. The sick cannot wait for flattery and coercion to do their work.”

“How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.”

“I do not know anything about Art with a capital A. What I do know about is my art. Because it concerns me. I do not speak for others. So I do not speak for things which profess to speak for others. My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.”

“There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.”

“Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”

“So come Cinderella, let me take you to the ball again. Perhaps you will see more than I did, or perhaps you will begin to understand how difficult it is to understand. Truth is never easily wrested from the stuff of life, and this stuff was even stranger and sometimes more repellent than the usual fare.”